Information Fusion: Telling a Story (or Threat Narrative)

Today's operators face a "double whammy"-the need to process increasing amounts of information, including "Twitter-INT" 1 (social information such as Facebook, You-Tube videos, blogs, Twitter) as well as the need to discern threat signatures in new security environments, including those in which the airspace is contested. To do this will require the Air Force to "fuse and leverage its vast capabilities in new ways." 2 For starters, the integration of quantitative and qualitative information must be done in a way that preserves important contextual information since the goal increasingly is to identify and mitigate violence before it occurs. To do so requires a more nuanced understanding of the environment being sensed, including the human environment, ideally from the "emic" perspective; that is, from the perspective of that individual or group. This requires not only data and information that informs the understanding of how the individuals and/or groups see themselves and others (social identity) but also information on how that identity filters information in their environment which, in turn, shapes their behaviors. 3 The goal is to piece together the individual and/or collective narratives regarding threat, the threat narrative, from various sources of information. Is there a threat? If so, what is it? What is motivating the threat? What is the intent of those who pose the threat and what are their capabilities and their vulnerabilities?(4) This paper will describe preliminary investigations regarding the application of prototype hybrid information fusion method based on the threat narrative framework.